Celtics say they're learning from their mistakes

Sunday

Dec 23, 2007 at 12:01 AMDec 23, 2007 at 11:21 PM

When a team wins 20 of its first 22 games, then loses in the final tenth of a second on its homecourt for the first time, it is hardly cause for a moment of clarity. Yet there were things about the Pistons game Wednesday night that you could tell gnawed at the Celtics.

Scott Souza

You often hear about how it is good to have a limited short-term memory in sports. Focus on the present, quickly forget about the past.

When you have a bad night -- especially when those nights are seldom -- put it out of your mind so the feeling doesn't fester.

It may work in some sports -- baseball when teams play seven days a week, for instance. But for this year's Celtics, having a selective memory is much more important than having a bad one.

When a team wins 20 of its first 22 games, then loses in the final tenth of a second on its homecourt for the first time, it is hardly cause for a moment of clarity. Yet there were things about the Pistons game Wednesday night that you could tell gnawed at the Celtics. It wasn't the loss that ate at them, it was a handful of regrettable plays that made the difference in the pursuit of perfection.

They all know that no team is going to go 41-0 at home. But the endless pursuit of unattainable perfection is still the motivation.

So was the case Friday night when the Celtics did what emerging elite teams do. They didn't dwell on the Pistons loss. They took just enough from it to make sure a stumble didn't become a tumble, in a pillar-to-post whipping of a Bulls team that figured to give the Celtics a challenge with its youth, rapid ball movement and typically active defense.

"We remembered it because it was two days ago," said Ray Allen, who had his second straight strong game coming off an ankle rest with 18 points (three 3-pointers). "As much as it seems far in our memory (in some ways), we still remember it.

"You let the fact that you lost go and forget about it, but you know you also have to be on edge because we have to get back to our winning ways."

Kevin Garnett called it "a statement game" and that it helped the Celtics regain their confidence. He later clarified that "confidence" was the wrong word and that the goal was more to recognize what things went wrong and eliminate them.

"Before games I think Ray and Paul (Pierce) were repeating the same thing: 'We stop the bleeding tonight.' We try not to carry over the bad things," Garnett said. "When I say bad things, I mean techniques. You never want to carry those things over from a loss. You want to come out and have a solid practice (the next day) and then carry those things over.

"When we lose," he later added, "and we want it to be very, very, very, very few, when we make mistakes in a loss we want to apply those over to the new game and I think we did that (Friday night)."

Allen said you try to draw upon specific situations from a setback rather than the general distaste of defeat.

"That game there was a part where we turned the ball over and didn't execute," he said. "That's the stuff where we just didn't do what we knew were supposed to do and you forget about that.

"The plays down the stretch, you remember those," he continued. "Those are stored in your memory bank. You are scarred for lifetime on those. You think about the next time when those situations come up again.

"When TA (Tony Allen) is sitting there, and someone (pump fakes like Chauncey Billups did to draw the game-winning foul shots), he thinks: I am not even going for that. I am going to put my hand up and walk into him and not going to jump. That's what makes our team better having experienced those situations."

Those situations will come up over the course of the season to even the best teams. On the same night the squad with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference trimmed the Celtics by two points, the defending champion Spurs lost to the lowly Grizzlies. The laughingstock Knicks dismantled the defending Eastern Conference champion Cavaliers (with LeBron James back in action) in Madison Square Garden, as fans held vigil for the firing of Isiah Thomas near 34th Street outside.

It is not losing a game that tests a championship contender, it is how it responds to that loss. The Celtics responded emphatically Friday night against the Bulls. If the Pistons exposed any chinks in the armor, that is not necessarily a bad thing at this point of the season. The wounds were quickly covered and soon healed.

It is the sting of how they were incurred, and the knowledge of how to prevent it from happening again, that becomes the added fuel moving forward.

Scott Souza is a Daily News staff writer. He can be reached at 781-398-8006 or ssouza@cnc.com. For updates and analysis, check out the "Courtside View" blog at www.metrowestdailynews.com.